Glenn Beck: GOP Must Rediscover Core ValuesSen. John McCain has yet to win over hard-core conservatives. Talk-show host Glenn Beck is one of them. He says the Republican front-runner is "more dangerous to the conservative movement than Hillary Clinton."

"Hillary Clinton, you know what you're getting from her; you know who she is," Beck tells Steve Inskeep. "She actually believes in things, and I think John McCain believes in things, but they're not conservative."

Beck describes himself as independent, not Republican.

"I think when I was really young, I considered myself a Republican because of Ronald Reagan," Beck says. "But the party of Ronald Reagan has been missing. It's kind of like the Republicans now are, 'Where did I put those values I used to believe in? Oh, I must have left them in my other jacket.' "

"Somehow or another, they've developed and morphed into this party that is for bigger government, more spending: 'We can solve all your problems.' Real conservatives don't believe that," Beck says.

Beck, a recovering alcoholic, says he needed to bottom out before he could recover. He says the conservative movement might need to do the same thing.

"I think the more we enable these parties to tell us one thing and do the other, we are adding to their alcoholism," he says. "They're not drunks — they're addicted to power. Stop enabling them. Let them bottom out. And, boy, this is tough medicine.

"Let [Democrat] Barack Obama get in, let them put these policies in. It will either work, or it will be a disaster."

Such a scenario would be good for the conservative movement, Beck says: "Jimmy Carter gave us Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton gave us Newt Gingrich. Every time there is this swing to extreme, the other side comes back with real conservative values, and you start to move forward again."

Beck says the conservative he admires most these days is former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who was defeated for re-election in 2006. "I think this guy really has it. I think he really understands the world we live in right now."